Summary
Contents
How do we understand drug use? How are drugs related to our social worlds? How should drug use be understood, approached and dealt with? Insightful and illuminating, this book successfully discusses drugs in social contexts. In an elegant manner, the authors bring together their different theoretical and practical backgrounds, offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction that opens up a wide scientific understanding moving beyond cultural myths and presuppositions. Powerful and engaging, this book discusses main questions within the field of psychoactive drugs research, such as: Why do people take drugs? How do we understand moral panics? What is the relationship between drugs and violence? How do people's social positions influence their individual involvement in drug use? This is an invaluable reference source for students on criminology, sociology and social sciences programmes, as well as students and drug service practitioners in social work, social policy and nursing.
Substitute Prescribing
Substitute Prescribing
Prescribed medicine used as a substitute for a drug that has produced dependence. Substitute prescribing generally refers to opioid substitution treatment or opioid substitution therapy whereby opioids are prescribed to people who are dependent on heroin or other opiates.
Opiate drugs, for example, morphine and codeine, are sourced from the pod of the opium poppy and are used and prescribed for pain relief. Drugs that are derived from these natural opiates are referred to as semi-synthetic opiates and include heroin, oxycodone, hydrocodone and other substances. In contrast, synthetic drugs are not found in nature; rather they are manufactured from various chemical compounds. The term, opioids, includes opiates as well as synthetic substances that are designed to mirror the effects of morphine. Consistent use ...
